


Glass Gardens (The Witching Hour Remix)

by Woad



Category: Marvel 616, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse of Authority, Alternate Universe - Victorian, M/M, Muteness, Possession, Psychological Horror, Semi-involuntary Detention, Supernatural Elements, Victorian Norms, Water Torture, ghost story, sanitarium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-17 12:27:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13658976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Woad/pseuds/Woad
Summary: The year is 1883. Spiritualism is at an all-time high, "taking the waters" is a popular cure-for-what-ails-you, and sanitariums offer retreats to restore the health. When Tony is shipped off to one, he is convinced his stay will be an utter waste of time. That is, until things take a disastrous turn, and Tony begins to doubt everything about himself.





	Glass Gardens (The Witching Hour Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Ghosts of the Gilded Age](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13067832) by [teaberryblue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/teaberryblue/pseuds/teaberryblue). 



_Nox et solitudo plenae sunt diabolo._

At night, my room is full of devils.

   - The Fathers of the Church, an epigraph in Aloysius Bertrand's _Gaspard de la Nuit_

 

_A flash of light. Then darkness. He felt himself falling, being swallowed by the void, pulled—apart? Through time and space? Perhaps both, or perhaps it was all the same._

_When the dizzying motion ended, he began to pull himself together, piece by piece, a long, slow process, like a spider repairing a wind-torn web. Only something was wrong with the jagged bits he was cobbling together. They fit together strangely._

_Something was amiss; something was missing. Tony found himself groping in the dark, hands quivering outward toward the unknown, a thing he could not remember, but knew by the hole it had left in him. He couldn't say what pressed him onward in his search, only that it was imperative that he find it. He took another blind, half-step forward, and his fingers brushed something colder than ice, so frigid that it burned—_

—Tony woke from his fitful doze as the carriage jolted to a stop. He heard Mr. Hogan swing down from the driver's seat, feet squelching in the mud, and then the black lacquered door of the coach swung open. Mr. Hogan held a lantern aloft for him, and reluctantly Tony climbed out of the carriage, blinking away the sleep from his eyes.

His first impression of the place was poor, and he wrinkled his nose as it was assaulted by the smell of strong brine. Not surprising, given that he could hear ocean waves breaking on a shore somewhere nearby. _The sea air will do wonders for your constitution,_ they'd said. He may as well have walked through a fishmonger's instead.

"So this is the Frost House." Tony looked up at the looming three story, gabled manor house, rising from the evening fog. Its shingled roof looked like it was in want of repairs, and the facade was covered with withered vines. On either side of the door, two planters held the yellowed corpses of long-dead plants. It was one of the least welcoming places he had ever laid eyes on, but there was no going back now. He must resign himself to this stay.

"Yes sir," Mr. Hogan said, unloading his valise from the roof.

Candles burned in the front windows, and Tony saw moving shadows behind the curtains. Presently, one of the two front doors opened, and a tall man strode out and down the steps to greet them. He wore a dark frock coat, and pulled off a black leather glove to clasp Tony's hand in his, cool and firm, just as a gentleman's ought to be. In the lantern light, he looked deathly pale.

"Mr. Stark, is it? Welcome."

"You must be Dr. Essex," Tony ventured.

"Indeed. I trust the journey was not too taxing?"

"A bit stiff, if I'm honest, but a day and a half's carriage ride isn't the worst trial I've ever endured."

"No, from what I've heard, I'd imagine not. Which reminds me—" the doctor dug in the inner pocket of his coat and produced a sealed letter, which he handed over to Mr. Hogan. On the front, in curled script, it was addressed to _The Honorable Judge Walden._ At the sight of it, Tony bristled _._ A confirmation that he had arrived, no doubt. As if he couldn't be trusted.

Dr. Essex caught the look on his face. "Does it bother you?"

It did, but he wouldn't admit it.

"No," Tony replied. He could weather a few days in this health retreat, pretend it was a vacation, and then it would be back to home, a letter in hand for the Judge certifying he was of sound mind. "Will you be conducting my examination tomorrow?"

Dr. Essex stroked his goatee in thought. "I think not. I wouldn't want the wear of your journey to color the assessment. No, first we should get you settled and comfortable."

He extended one hand toward the stairs to the house, and Tony sighed inwardly. Not ready to go just yet, he turned to Mr. Hogan, took his valise, and shook his hand. "Safe travels, Mr. Hogan. I hope to see you again soon."

"And I you, sir. I hate to leave you here, without so much as a familiar soul."

"I'll be perfectly fine. Tell Ms. Potts not to fret too much."

Mr. Hogan snorted. "Fret? More like tear the walls down." He glanced sidelong at the doctor and tucked the letter into the inner pocket of his coat. "I'll be sure to pass everything along."

He swung himself back up into the driver's seat, and with a flick of the reins the carriage rolled off. Tony watched it, a bitter taste in his mouth, as it disappeared into the fog. When he looked back to the house, he found that a large man in bleached whites had joined them. The orderly held out his hand, offering to take the valise, and Tony's stiff muscles gladly accepted the offer.

"Well then," Dr. Essex said, "let us tentatively set your examination for the day after tomorrow, nine in the morning. Are you a morning person, Mr. Stark?"

"Only begrudgingly."

Dr. Essex seemed faintly amused at that. "Ten then. Mr. Shaw can show you where my office is and where you'll be sleeping. Goodnight, Mr. Stark."

He turned and strode off, not up into the house, but out toward the mist-shrouded grounds.

"Where's he going?" Tony asked, bewildered.

"He prefers not to room in the manor," Shaw replied. "He has a cottage out among the gardens. I'm sure you'll be able to see it tomorrow. Come along, now."

Tony followed Shaw into the house, through the foyer, with a gently ticking grandfather clock and a table with a large vase of purple flowers, and up a steep flight of stairs to the second story. Perhaps it was Tony's imagination, but the inside of the manor hardly seemed warmer than the chill air outside.

The second floor of the large house was T-shaped, with rows of doors along each corridor. Shaw led him down the right hall, pointed him to a door that led to a bathroom— _thank God for modern luxuries_ —and then stopped in front of the last door on the left. He drew a ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked it, waving Tony inside. It was a modest room, musty smelling, with a small writing desk and a bed piled with several thick blankets. On top of them, two set of clothes had been laid out—sleeping flannels, complete with a nightcap, and a simple white collared shirt and gray woolen trousers. Tony turned around to take his valise, but to his surprise, Shaw refused to give it to him.

"You won't be needing this here," he explained. "Patients aren't allowed personal things. It interferes with the convalescence."

Tony was aghast. "You can't just take my things."

"Perhaps there was some miscommunication. It is part of the terms of staying here," Shaw replied, as if to say, _yes I can._ "I'll place it in the doctor's office for safe keeping. You'll be welcome to reclaim it when you're fit to leave. I'll be by for your old clothes in the morning." Then he smiled at Tony, and then pulled the door shut.

Tony began to object, only to hear the lock click. The devil had confined him!

But as angry as that made him, there wasn't much he could do about it. Weary and irritated, he changed, shedding his dusty travel clothes on the floor, and climbed beneath the covers. The road, it turned out, was a better soporific than even his customary evening whiskey. Despite the new, stiff bed, and the strange circumstances under which he had come here, Tony dozed quickly and woke only once during the wee hours of the night.

It was the dream of the cold, dark object again, and it startled him awake. The impression of its touch, this time on his shoulder, was so vivid that it still felt like it was there. Tony shivered and wrapped the blankets tighter around himself.

He slept soundly through the rest of the night—waking again the next morning when he heard the lock on his door click open.

~*~

A stormy gust of air invaded the parlor, swept in through the ocean-facing French doors. They had been thrown wide open, Tony saw, looking up from his book, and Miss Maximoff was out on the porch, silhouetted against the dark gray sky. She had her hands cupped to her mouth and was turning from side to side as the wind picked up, strong enough to billow the heavy skirts of her long black dress.

All the clothing here, as far as Tony could tell, was white, gray, or black. A depressing sort of palette, if any one had asked Tony. But no one did.

"Tom! William! Come inside!" Ms. Maximoff shouted, growing increasingly alarmed as the seconds ticked by without any answer. All the while the chill of the oncoming storm continued to sink into the parlor, a dreadful sort of cold that made the heat of the hearth fire seem like that of a match by comparison. "Tom! Will! Come in before it starts to rain!"

Tony bit his lip, torn between getting up to speak with her and staying in the faded velvet of his armchair. He wasn't sure what was proper in this situation, having been in the Frost House for less than a day, but the woman was clearly distressed.

"Like _clockwork_ ," the old floorboards creaked, and Shaw walked in from the adjacent room, distaste tinging his whole visage as he went to go fetch her.

The mortar of Tony's impression last night had set, so to speak, and he was of the firm belief that Shaw was a thoroughly unpleasant man. He vacillated between irritated scowls and paper thin courtesy, and seemed to prefer his newspaper to the patients. That suited Tony just fine. He had every intent of steering clear of Shaw for the few days he would remain at the Frost House.

Shaw whispered something in Ms. Maximoff's ear, then ushered her back through the doors, bolting them shut behind him. The wind rattled at them, an angry sound, like someone was standing on the other side, demanding to be let inside.

"Will it be a bad storm?" Tony asked. He was unused to being kept in the dark about the world at large. Quite the opposite, actually. Potts had delivered a daily briefing of the world at large every morning over breakfast and coffee. He'd often ignored the details, but now Tony found himself pining for them, and for the sardonic tone Ms. Potts adopted whenever he had to ask her to repeat one of them.

Shaw shook his head. "The paper says light rain overnight. You'll hardly notice it before it's gone."

Through the doorway, Tony spied Shaw's abandoned newspaper, left on the seat of a windowed alcove. If he could only get a glance at the headlines…he was dying to know whether they were still talking about the Metal Man of Manhattan.

"But my boys are still out there," Miss Maximoff insisted. She sank on to an upholstered chair opposite Tony, but perched herself on the edge of its seat, bursting with anxious energy. "I have to go look for them, Mr. Shaw. If they've gotten lost—"

"Miss Maximoff," Shaw interrupted, coming up behind and resting a meaty hand on her shoulder. His gruff voice was devoid of any gentleness. "We've discussed this before, you and me and the doctor. Your boys are buried and dead. You must make some effort to remember that if you're ever to make progress."

"No. No, they couldn't have—"

Tony felt a pang of sympathy for her, even as he wondered whether he should leave the room. Surely this wasn't meant for his ears? But Shaw's hand on her shoulder…the indecency of it made the hair on the back of Tony's neck prickle. So he sat frozen, watching as the desperate woman trembled all over.

The wind battered at the doors, and Ms. Maximoff turned sharply, looking over her shoulder. "I thought I heard Tom."

Shaw scowled. "Dr. Essex will be disappointed to hear about this episode. Perhaps I'd better take you to him for an urgent appointment."

It was the doctor's name that finally snapped her from her fixation on her boys. "No, no," she said in a rush, looking up at Shaw.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. I merely forgot again."

"I need to be absolutely certain you remember. You recall the _method of loci_ that I taught you, to help you remember, don't you?"

For a moment she sat frozen, hands twisting in her lap, and Tony was confused at what the orderly was prying at. Then Ms. Maximoff swallowed and looked down. Her expression grew wooden. "I am sitting on a red blanket. I can see my boys are playing by the river." She said the words, but they seemed rote on her tongue, like an oft repeated catechism. She and Shaw must have done this dozens of times. "Now I am by a tree that grows up from the water. The boys have waded deeper." Here the impassive look on her face faltered, real pain bleeding into her voice. "But I didn't really see them wade deeper...I would have stopped them..." 

"What did the good doctor say about that, Miss Maximoff?"

She pressed her lips together. "That  _I didn't see_ is a form of denial."

"I'm glad to hear you remember that, Ms. Maximoff. Go on."

Her eyes met Tony's for a moment, and they were haunted and pleading. "I am by the tree. I can see them wading deeper. Now I am standing on the bank of the river. I see a surge of water sweep them away. They…they drowned." Her voice broke as she covered her face. "It's my fault. I should have watched them more closely."

Shaw seemed satisfied at that, even though she remained rigid in the chair. He reached out and petted her hair, tucked a long, curling lock behind one ear. If the players in the display had been different, it might have resembled tenderness. Instead, Ms. Maximoff flinched at Shaw's touch. With her hair pushed aside, Tony saw, much to his dismay, that she had a purpling bruise just below her ear.

Shaw's lips curved into a toothy grin. "Fortunately for all of you, the doctor and I are more attentive."

~*~

Outside the wind howled, and rain battered against the windows. Tony stopped in the foyer to examine the big grandfather clock. It had intricate filigree inside, though tarnished with age, and a plate above the metal face that read,  _TEMPUS BREVE EST._ If it still kept true time, then it had barely struck noon, but already the house felt as dark as sun down.

So much for promises of a light storm.

 _Just a few more days of this_ , he reminded himself, climbing the narrow staircase, a small candle in one hand.

Shaw was a bad egg, even more than Tony had first suspected. The lack of decorum he had seen was no less than an abuse of position as a caretaker. Why did he get away with it? Dr. Essex had displayed all manner of gracious propriety when Tony had arrived last night—and he was bound by an oath to medicine. Did he know and turn a blind eye? Or was he too consumed with his research to notice? Tony hadn't seen a hint of the doctor since he had disappeared into the evening mist yesterday. Either way, once he saw that Tony was of a sound mind, he would have to send Tony home and end this miserable misunderstanding. And once he was free, Tony could report Shaw.

Tony had intended to continue his reading beneath the covers of his bed, hoping it would be warmer than the drafty sitting rooms. But at the top of the stairs, he was greeted with piano music coming from the farthest end of the middle corridor. For a moment he was thrown back in time to a very similar memory, listening at the door of a music room as his mother spun the songs of Chopin and Liszt into the air. Curiosity got the better of him. Tony tucked the book tighter beneath his arm and followed the music.

The Frost House's music room was circular shaped with vaulted ceilings, smaller than the dusty one in his family manor, and wallpapered in a deep green imbroglio of a pattern. The grand piano next to the window, however, was probably much better tuned than the disused antique his mother had left behind. From the clothes that mirrored Tony's own, the mysterious musician was another patient, one that Tony had not met yet. He had a pointed face and hair so blond that it looked like the white of an old man's head. His long, milky fingers flew over the black and white keys in a frenzy, nimble enough that he might have been a professional.

He must have caught sight of Tony out of the corner of one eye. The music suddenly collapsed into a cacophony of notes as he startled, snapping his head around to glare at Tony.

"Apologies," Tony said. "I didn't mean to interrupt. I only wanted to listen."

The other man regarded him with narrowed eyes, and for instant he seemed to Tony like a great white rat, gnawing at the bars of its cage. "You play?"

Tony shook his head no.

From the other man's expression, Tony thought this might be welcome news—no competition over the instrument—but if anything the man grew more sour. "Shame. I thought I might have been able to sit and listen for a change. No one else here has a shred of musical talent. You're Dr. Essex's new patient. Stark was it?"

"Yes, that's right."

The disdain stayed firmly in place on the man's face as he focused on the piano keys again, starting up an etude that Tony was sure he had heard once, a lifetime ago. "How does a man as rich as you come to be stuck in a place like this?"

This morning Tony might have been confused by the question. But after what he had seen in the parlor, it made the knot in Tony's stomach twist. "A…friend recommended the place. Her sister came here to recover from a bout of nerves."

"Then she was either foolish, or not really a friend."

The thought hurt, viscerally so. It had injured Tony enough that Indries had voiced concerns over his well-being in front of a judge. It was unthinkable to entertain the notion she had recommended the health retreat in bad faith. _This will be better than the alternative, Tony, s_ he had insisted. More than a spa, less than an asylum. _You just need some rest away from the world._

Tony circled around to the end of the piano, running his hand over the polished wood. It hummed beneath his hand as the other man played. From this vantage, he saw that another vase of purple flowers had been set in this room, hidden behind the piano. They were scattered throughout the house, it seemed, a cheery touch amidst the dourness and neglect. "How long have you been here?"

"What is the date?"

"November the 6th."

"What year?"

Tony was taken aback. "1883."

The man looked up with a yard long stare, hands working the piano as if by themselves. The song began to morph, the notes growing dissonant. A mirror to his mood. "Then my sister and I have been here for over two years."

Tony had only seen one women on the grounds."Ms. Maximoff is your sister?"

The man nodded, and when he spoke, his voice brimmed with fury. "I am Pietro Maximoff, and if you lay one finger on her, I will strangle you while you sleep."

~*~

The rain refused to let up all day, and when Tony retired to bed, it continued to thunder against the windows and rattle around the downspout, keeping him awake. He wasn't the only one either—he heard footsteps at odd intervals in a room above him, pacing the floor.

Sleep was hard enough for Tony to come by on most days. It was not so much bouts of insomnia (he hoped) as it was his mind, humming away with ideas. A glass of whiskey usually dulled the chattering of his subconscious enough for him to get a few hours of sleep, but to his dismay, he had found the Frost House kept no liquor. Perhaps that explained something of Shaw's prickly personality.

His one reprieve for the evening was that no one came to lock his door. Tony took this as a tacit communique that good behavior would be rewarded with freedoms, and for disruptive behaviors, restriction.

He had taken his book to bed with him, knowing that sleep would be elusive, and for a time he read by candlelight. When the candle finally burned out, it was shortly after the grandfather clock chimed midnight, and Tony was forced to abandon reading, and take up tossing and turning. Tony hated nights like these more than anything—nothing to distract him, or dull the thoughts, because invariably, they always turned to his greatest failures. His latest, which was the last in a web of interlocking mistakes, had been to Potts. He hadn't even made amends for the mess he'd caused her. He'd never been good at apologizing, and stuck here, it was all the harder.

Tony shut his eyes tight and tried to will sleep to come, telling himself it would be bad form to show up at the doctor's office in the morning with bags under his eyes. Unfortunately, chiding himself was little help, and by the time the clock chimed two in the morning, Tony felt he was going mad.

He climbed out of bed and stepped into the hall.

Except for the faint ticking of the clock, and the sound of the storm, the whole house was quiet and dark. Tony groped his fingers along the hall wall, feeling the peeling wallpaper as he made his way back downstairs. One of the front rooms off the foyer was a makeshift study, set aside for patients who wanted to pursue knowledge during their leisure. Some of the books on the sciences were remarkably up to date, others appeared to be from the dark ages. It was this room that Tony sought out, seating himself at a desk in front of the window, and pulled out a candle, paper, and an ink pot from its drawers.

He set his candle near a vase of the ubiquitous, drooping tendrils of flowers. _Amaranth,_ Ms. Maximoff had explained. _From the Greek, unfading. Some people call them tassel flowers, or love-lies-bleeding._

The grown up version of forget-me-nots, Tony supposed, though perhaps his lorn love life biased him.

He stared out the window for some time. He watched storm clouds ripple through the sky, thinning in places, and letting the silvery light of the moon shine down, casting patterns of shadow and pale light on the ground below. In the darkness, he could just make out the shape of the stone wall that marked the boundary of the estate, and between it and the manor, hedges and roses grew. They had all been cut back for the winter, barren and bony looking, but still, it might be lovely to take a stroll through the gardens if the weather ever let up during his stay.

After much thought, Tony began composing a letter to his secretary. If he knew Virginia Potts—and a decade's worth of employment said he did—then he knew she was calling in every favor she had to get him out of this place sooner. He should have listened to her when she told him to appeal his judgment, but at the time he had thought this would be the easiest way to deal with his mistake.

Tony started twice, and after the first few sentences burned the pages over the candle.

Drawing out a third page, he told himself to stop avoiding the thing he really wanted to say.

 

_Dearest Potts,_

_I never got a chance to thank you after the World's Fair debacle. Please accept a belated one from me. It must have been hellish dealing with the papers._

_The past few days on the road, and here, I have come to realize just how much you do for me, that if I am a functional man, it is probably your doing, and not my own. You have been patient with me, chided me to remember my own safety, and stood by me, even though I am sure you were angry. I shouldn't have taken the armor out without more testing. You were right._

_I'm sure Mr. Hogan will have arrived back at the mansion long before this letter does, and told you that I arrived in good health, if not spirits._

He considered this last line, a few dribbles of ink escaping from the quill and dotting the sheet of paper where he'd stopped. Then he struck it. Who was he fooling? Potts had always seen through him. A lie delivered by hand wouldn't fool her any more than one from his mouth.

_It wouldn't have been my first choice. Nor has more fondness for the place grown on me. You were right. But it is thoughts of you, Mr. Harold, and Mrs. Arbogast that will see me through this. I am forever indebted to you all, and am certain I will see you again soon._

_Don't bother with a reply, they only allow letters out here, not in._

_-Tony_

 

Tony sat back, scanning the letter until he was satisfied it was truthful, but not too maudlin.

"Late to be out of bed, isn't it?"

Tony jumped and whirled around.

Mr. Victor was a dark and solitary type, one of two remaining patients that Tony had only formally met at dinner that night. He was an unusual man. He'd given no last name, and his face was horribly scarred. He was standing right behind Tony, hands clasped behind his back.

"I couldn't sleep," Tony replied. "What's your excuse?"

Mr. Victor stepped around Tony, drawing the curtains at the window wider, and stretched out his fingers on the pane of glass, across the glow of the crescent moon which was just visible through the swirling clouds. "Night is when the arcane secrets of the world can be gleaned." The clock in the foyer chimed three, uncomfortably loud, and Mr. Victor withdrew himself from the window. He moved like a serpent, and his eyes shifted, never quite looking Tony in the eye. "You should go to bed. The walls of the world are thin during the witching hour."

"You're a spiritualist?" Tony wasn't a superstitious man. He scoffed at the seance fad and preoccupation with spirits that had seized a subset of the country. Thinning walls—at any hour of the day—was a preposterous notion. As if the world were some poorly made house! "I'm sure I shall be perfectly fine."

Mr. Victor made a dismissive noise, but he didn't belabor his point. He drifted out of the room and into the darkness, perhaps to heed his own advice.

A crack of lightning briefly lit up the sky outside, and Tony jumped. What a dreary night. What a dreary day, for that matter. It didn't seem to matter much if patients had freedom of the grounds with weather like this. Another flash of light, and Tony felt a chill go through him. He thought he had seen something—a dark figure near the wall. But another fork of lightning split the sky, and there was nothing—and no place for someone to hide out there in the open. It must have just been his imagination. Tony felt a sour note of annoyance at the thought that Mr. Victor's silly words might have subtly gotten to him.

Tony turned his attention back to his letter, and penned a hasty post-script. _Would not recommend the place. Terrible weather._

Tony sealed the letter, and placed it in the tray for post pick up. He was just contemplating taking out another book from the study's library when he heard the stairs creak.

"Headed to bed, Mr. Victor?" he asked, grabbing his candle, and heading into the foyer.

But his late night companion wasn't Mr. Victor after all. Rather, Ms. Maximoff stood on the staircase, one hand lightly trailing down the banister. She had no candle to guide her in the darkness, and her eyes were closed, her posture stiff and rigid.

"Tony!" she cried, a strange, unsettling choice of address. Tony wasn't even certain he had _told_ her his first name. Worse, her voice was pitched in an eerie, lower register. "Tony, I finally found you! Listen, I can't speak long. You have to find a way out of this place. You're—" She trailed off into a high pitched screech.

Tony's mouth dropped open. "Ms. Maximoff!" He sprinted to her and took one of her hands, and was startled by how cold she was. It was like touching ice. "Ms. Maximoff? Please wake up!"

She shuddered, but her eyes fluttered open. A daze of sleepiness quickly morphed to confusion. "Where am I?" She sounded alarmed, but—small relief—she sounded like herself again.

"I think you must have been sleep walking." Tony let go of her hand, realizing he had held on longer than was appropriate. Was it his imagination, or had it grown suddenly warm? 

Ms. Maximoff didn't give any indication that she had noticed Tony's impropriety. "Strange. I've never had that happen before." She blinked and looked around the foyer. "How odd. I was dreaming of the first night I came here, of the way I explored all the rooms that weren't locked. Maybe my body thought it ought to go along?"

"Perhaps," Tony said, watching her turn to go back to her room. "Ms. Maximoff—" he called out, on the verge of telling her what she had said to him in her sleep. But then she paused, looking down at him with weary eyes that Tony knew all too well. He bit his tongue. The poor woman had enough demons of her own. Tony didn't want to complicate them further. Instead he said, "Sleep well."

She gave him a faint smile. "And you as well, Mr. Stark."

Between the words, Tony suspected that they both knew it was an empty, vain wish.

He hoped she had more candles than he did to pass through the lonely, sleepless nights.

~*~

Tony woke to a pounding on his door. Shaw. "You're late Mr. Stark."

He rubbed at his eyes and dressed hurriedly, keen not to keep the doctor waiting any longer. He had just knocked on the office door when he realized that he had forgotten to drag a comb through his hair.

Dr. Essex looked up as he entered, setting some papers aside. To Tony's relief, he did not seem irritated. "You truly aren't a morning person," he remarked.

"No."

"Trouble sleeping?"

"Nothing beyond normal," Tony replied conversationally. "Seems I'm not the only one around here. Whoever's in the room above me must not have gotten much sleep either. I heard them pacing all night." On the other side of a bit of rest, he had the wherewithal to wonder if it might have been Ms. Maximoff or Mr. Victor.

"Really?" Dr. Essex asked, putting on a pair of reading glasses and picking up a notebook. He made a short note in it, and Tony's stomach lurched. He hadn't realized they'd already begun. "That's peculiar. There's nothing on the third floor."

Tony blinked, confused. He couldn't have imagined it. Could it have been a half-waking dream?

"How do you deal with your sleeping problem when you are at home, Mr. Stark?"

Tony considered lying, not knowing where this doctor might stand on temperance. But he decided it would be worse for his first real question in this exam to be caught out as a lie. He had a reputation, after all. "Two fingers of whiskey, usually."

The doctor's pen scratched against the paper. "Yes, the society pages have quite an opinion on that. Tell me, does a dependence on alcohol run in your family?"

Tony started to sense danger, and when he didn't reply right away, Dr. Essex elaborated. "The note that I received from the judge indicated that you were a danger to yourself and others, that you were inside the strange rocket that crashed into the French pavilion at the World's Fair, and that you were drunk. You pled no contest in exchange for a fine and sealed court records on the pilot's identity, did you not?"

Tony swallowed. "Yes."

"Piloting a rocket in a city is fairly reckless, wouldn't you say, Mr. Stark?"

"I didn't intend to."

"But still, you did, while drunk no less, endangering every person who was in your path.

"I'm not saying what I did was right."

"That interests me less than whether you feel remorse for the act." Dr. Essex readjusted his glasses and pulled something from a drawer, a letter, and began to read. " _I never got a chance to thank you after the World's Fair debacle. Please accept a belated one from me. It must have been hellish dealing with the papers._ A debacle, you say. Your worry was the publicity?"

Tony felt a rush of hot anger, hearing his own words read out and used against him. That wasn't what he had meant at all. Potts would have understood, and it had been for her eyes only. "That was a private letter! You had no right."

Tony made to snatch the letter, and Dr. Essex leaned back, the paper held just out of his reach. "Calm yourself Mr. Stark, or I will call Mr. Shaw, and that will be the end of this."

Tony was still seething with anger, and had half a mind to throw all caution to the wind and tell Essex to call in whoever he damn well pleased.

"You have no right to privacy here, Mr. Stark. Have you forgotten that?"

As a matter of fact, Tony couldn't remember anything in the paperwork so draconian. Potts had read them over even more thoroughly than he had. Surely she would have caught such troubling terms.

"Now, back to your family history." Essex picked the notebook back up, but despite his cool demeanor, all pretense of this being a cordial affair had evaporated. "You decline to state if there is a history of alcohol dependence, I take it. Moving on, then. How would you describe your relationship with your mother?"

Tony bristled. "My mother was a saint."

"You were young when she passed?"

"Sixteen."

"And how was your relationship with your father?"

"He was a busy man."

"Would you describe him as cold?"

Tony narrowed his eyes. "I've been getting along just fine for the last two decades without either of them. I don't see why it matters what they were like."

Essex tapped his pen against the page a few times, and then scribbled a few quick notes. Then he shut the notebook and took off the glasses. "From what I have seen of you so far, Mr. Stark, I have a strong suspicion that you do indeed suffer from neuroses, chiefly narcissism."

Tony felt a chill run through him. It was over, and by losing his temper, he'd botched his one chance to prove the judge had been wrong. "Then you mean to keep me here."

Essex smiled. "Don't fret, Mr. Stark. It may not have been what you were expecting. But I'm confident it will do you much good. I have a whole regimen in mind for you."

A knock on the door interrupted the doctor from elaborating, and Shaw peeked his dark head through. "Victor's had an episode again."

Essex nodded. "Bring him out to the treatment room. I'll be along shortly."

~*~

That night, the rain petered off, giving way to a dense, smothering fog that wrapped itself around the manor house, just like the night he'd arrived. Tony drew the curtains tight. At least with them closed, he could imagine the gardens and the road were still visible out there, could imagine himself leaving this god-forsaken house.

He lay awake in that darkness for some time, craving a stiff drink, wanting his own bed, and trying to devise a way to get word to Potts that it had all gone so wrong. Perhaps he would go for a walk tomorrow. Some fresh air would be a nice change.

Tony drifted into uneasy sleep that night, and dreamed of the dark and ice again. Something was different this time, though. He wasn't alone. A hand reached out to him, blue, and frozen like Ms. Maximoff's. He tried to shout, to ask who was there, but when he opened his mouth, his throat closed up, as if he was being strangled.

He reeled, and then there was an explosion, heat, and a blinding burst of light that pushed away the cold and the hand. He found himself standing in the middle of twisted scraps of metal, the bent remains of the armor's face plate clinging to his head asTony tried to steady himself on two feet. An astonishingly large hole was still smoldering in the side of the building in front of him. It had ruined a mural that had been painted there. Correction—Tony had ruined it. The painted figure of a man, clad in red, white, and blue still remained, but his face had been obliterated by the crash.

Somewhere, an artist was bound to be apoplectic.

Tony startled awake, shivering. The bed covers had puddled at the foot of his bed, kicked off by his thrashing. He thought that was what had awoken him. But as Tony groped for the quilts, he heard the pattering of footsteps again, racing along the floor above, almost like two cats chasing one another. Remembering what the doctor had said, he tried to convince himself that that was the truth of things. He nearly succeeded, too, even though he had seen no signs of a cat since arriving.

And then he heard the children's laughter.

~*~

Morning brought more storm clouds on the horizon. So much for escaping into the gardens for a walk.

It also brought an unpleasant surprise.

Tony rose late, well after breakfast. It did not bother him much, he knew from the previous days that he would be able to gathered up a cup of bitter coffee in the parlor, and so that was where his feet took him first. There he found Mr. Victor. The quiet man was known to keep a fastidious schedule, the intricacies of which were known to him alone, but Tony had been under the impression that he was rarely seen in the sitting room so early in the day.

Mr. Victor had claimed Tony's favored chair by the fire, but he had no book, or game, or cup of coffee. He wasn't preoccupying himself with anything. He simply stared into the flames, transfixed by something that Tony could not see.

He had bruising around his neck.

Suddenly, Ms. Maximoff's fear of an urgent appointment with the doctor made much more sense.

"Mr. Victor?" Tony asked. If the other man heard him, he gave no sign.

"Leave him be," Shaw grumbled as he entered, paper under one arm, a weatherproof coat in the other.

Tony eyed it. "Another storm tonight?"

"Only light rain." Shaw scanned the back porch. "Have you seen Ms. Maximoff?"

Even if he had, Tony wouldn't have told Shaw. He shook his head, and Shaw's expression grew annoyed as he pulled on the coat. "She'll be out looking for her boys again."

"I can help you look for her," Tony offered. Better he find her than Shaw, he reasoned.

"Don't be stupid, you'd freeze."

Shaw tucked the paper inside the heavy wool, and Tony felt a pang of disappointment. It would have been fortuitous if he had forgotten the newspaper. Tony was dying for news of the outside world.

After watching Shaw disappear out the back door toward the beach, Tony considered trying to find the other inhabitants of the Frost House. He wanted to know what had happened to Mr. Victor. It seemed obvious to Tony that whatever this was, it was directly related to yesterday, when Essex had instructed Shaw to take him from the house. Tony wanted to know how frequently it occurred. Was it only a matter of days before Tony suffered whatever they'd done to Mr. Victor?

But as Tony roamed the quiet house, he couldn't find anyone else. When he reached the silent music room, he gave up. Either they'd all taken the opportunity to go outside, despite the wind, or they were sequestered in their rooms.

 _There is still the third floor,_ Tony thought to himself. Essex had told him that there wasn't anything up there, but it wasn't off limits.

Did he really want to go investigate?

Yes, Tony decided. He didn't believe in bogeymen or ghosts. There had to be a perfectly ordinary explanation for what he had heard.

~*~

It was not strictly accurate to say the third floor held nothing.

It was not sectioned off into rooms, like the other floors, but an open space. The walls were partially unfinished, all naked wood instead of the water-stained wallpaper elsewhere in the house. Dozens of shapes, draped in white dust covers, were scattered about the floor, making navigating the room akin to picking one's way through a maze. There was no pattern to their placement, and when Tony pulled the thick tarp up on one of the larger shapes, he found an upright piano. The instrument had seen better days: it was missing half a dozen keys, and someone had cut a deep gouge into the wood of the fallboard, right where the name _Sohmer_ had once been in gold paint. He recognized the brand. He'd seen one of their pianos presented at the Philadelphia World's Fair only a few years ago.

If the house had a Sohmer piano, maybe, he mused, there was a phonograph up here too. Perhaps someone had been playing a record, and he had mistaken its sounds for children's laughter. Inventing a reason that such a new machine would be in storage stretched Tony's imagination, though. Perhaps it had suffered a fate similar to the Sohmer?

Tony found wardrobes, dining chairs, tables, and even a statue that reminded him of his suit of armor among the graveyard of covered shapes. No phonograph, though.

He considered the room around him for a few moments, turning and orienting himself. Then he realized the space wasn't long enough to stretch over his bedroom. A short staircase led to a mezzanine at the back of the room—that would be closer to where his bedroom lay.

But when he had climbed up to the loft, presumably to where the attic lay, he found himself at a dead-end, staring at a peculiar wall. The molding for a door was set into it, but there was no opening. It was as though someone had intended to cut a hole for a door and simply forgotten.

And yet, this was the spot that would have been over his bedroom. Tony tested the wall where a door should have been, but found it was solid—no secret passageway.

"No one's allowed in Emma's room," Tony heard a voice say.

Mr. Wilson was standing at the foot of the stairs, grinning at him. Of all the other patients, Mr. Wilson had been here the longest. _Never to leave,_ was Ms. Maximoff's dismal assessment of the man. It was uncomfortable to look at him. His face was covered with lesions, and he had a canny sense of when someone was staring.

"Is there a woman behind this?" Tony asked, aghast.

"Not anymore. It's a dreary place though—don't see what you want with poking around up here. Why don't we go for a stroll and smell the flowers instead?"

Tony ignored the proposal. He was given to understand the other man suggested it often, an otherwise inoffensive tic. "How long ago was Emma held here?"

Mr. Wilson cocked his head, tapping several fingers along his chin in thought. "Oh, ages. Long before you or I. No one told you the story of the Ice Princess when you got here?"

"I can't say they did."

"Ah. No one's interested in history these days! You know the portrait of the sour-faced girl? The one hanging in the billiard room? That was Emma Frost. Her father bought the place. Wanted a place to keep young Emma away from prying eyes. She was like us, you see."

Tony frowned. He wasn't sure he was like Mr. Wilson at all.

"It went well for awhile, but Emma wasn't very happy here. Go look at the portrait if you don't believe me; the look on her face says it all. She tried to run away, so her father shut her up in there. Locked the door and refused to let her out. No one was allowed to see her or speak with her."

"That's barbaric!"

"Is it?" Mr. Wilson asked, eyes twinkling. "I wouldn't know. I thought you blue bloods had your own standards for black sheep."

"They mostly ship us off to boarding school," Tony replied dryly, which made Mr. Wilson's eyes crinkle with laughter. "Did they ever let her out again?"

"No, she got a better ending. Revenge! Her father started talking to her again, one day out of the blue. Mind, this was after she was six feet under, but he claimed to see her late at night, walking the halls. So he bricked up the attic, said he'd keep her inside one way or another. That was when his wife gave up. She wanted nothing to do with the place, and signed it over to the doctor. She left her husband in his care too. And that's how I heard the whole sordid story, straight from the sick, old horse's mouth." Wilson gave Tony a sly, sideways glance. "Shame that her father's death didn't put Emma to rest. I've only seen her a few times."

The hair on the back of Tony's neck prickled, and Mr. Wilson grinned again, as if he knew how uncomfortable Tony was.

"The twins show up more often. Have you seen them yet? They're quite the adorable little scamps, always running inside—I'd say they definitely have Ms. Maximoff's eyes."

~*~

Like clockwork, the rain set in by midday, and it was a torrent all through the night. The raindrops served as a steady beat, drumming their rhythm into Tony's head as he lay awake. A blunt sort of terror had twined its way around his heart ever since he had parted ways with Mr. Wilson that afternoon.

 _I don't know what I heard_ , he told himself. _It could have been any number of things._

But certainly not ghosts. Whatever mania of spiritualism might have gripped the more suggestible people here, ghosts simply did not exist. If they did, surely someone would have come up with convincing evidence during the thousands of years of human history.

Tony stared at the plaster molding of his ceiling and the cracks running along it. Had they been there yesterday?

What a silly question, he told himself. Of course they had been. And yet a part of his mind gnawed at the thought. Hadn't he laid here for three nights now? Why was this the first that he had noticed them? Usually he was more perceptive.

 _The air of this place has gotten to you_ _…_

Or perhaps not the air.

 _My god_ , he thought horrified, _what if Shaw and Essex are drugging us?_

He'd thought the coffee after dinner had tasted too bitter…

The thought turned his stomach, enough that he felt as though he would be sick, and he stumbled out of bed toward to the lavatory. Dinner had been many long hours ago, and nothing but bile came up. His throat and nose burned, but in Tony's tired mind it felt like a purifying fire. He moved to the wash basin, filled it halfway with cold water, and rinsed his mouth and face.

And froze as he looked into the shaving mirror, water still beading off his chin and hands.

He could see the reflection of a man standing behind him, watching him—a man that Tony had never seen before in the house. He was handsome—tall and blond, and his worried eyes were studying Tony. Then Tony felt a chill all over as their eyes met in the mirror. The man's lips moved, mouthing Tony's name, but the only sound in the tiny room was a steady _drip, drip, drip_ , from the leaky faucet.

Feeling his heart thud in his chest, Tony looked over his shoulder.

The open door was the only thing behind him.

He stepped out into the hall, but the mysterious, silent man had disappeared without any trace. No man could run that quickly and that quietly.

So what had he seen?

Shaw had to be putting something in the food.

Tony went back to his room for a candle, struck a match with shaking hands, and lit the wick, before venturing out again. The candle was middling help in the dark, casting light only a few footsteps ahead of him, but its warmth gave him a small sort of comfort, and he had very few to call upon these days. He wondered if there was a bottle of cheap, cooking vermouth in the kitchen. Anything alcoholic would help, at this point. Wouldn't hurt to check, would it? It wasn't as if Tony would be able to sleep anyway…not on a normal night, and definitely not after whatever it was he had just seen.

Unfortunately for Tony, the strangeness of the night was far from over.

He was on the landing of the stairs when he saw them, standing at the bottom, side by side. And with a dreadful feeling crawling all over his skin, he could only think, _Mr. Wilson was right_ —they did have Ms. Maximoff's eyes.

The twins were looking up at him, and something in Tony's hind brain told him they had been expecting him.

One had brown, tousled hair; the other's was as white as snow. The brown haired boy leaned over to his brother, cupping his hands to his ear to whisper something. The white haired one laughed, and then took off running. He was gone in the space of a heartbeat.

"Would you like to know a secret?" the brown haired one asked. The question—the voice—took Tony completely by shock. It was like music in a distant room, echoing down halls and through walls.

The boy waited a few moments more when Tony stayed silent. Then, as if he had heard something Tony had not, he turned his head and ran after his brother.

They looked so real.

No wonder Ms. Maximoff kept looking for them.

Tony stood on the stairs, transfixed and quivering. Half of him—the sensible part—was determined to do nothing more than crawl back into bed, shut his eyes, and wait for morning—and if he was lucky, a return to normalcy. If this wasn't a drug induced vision, perhaps he was actually asleep and this was an all too vivid dream. Maybe he was sleepwalking, just like Ms. Maximoff.

But the restless part of Tony's brain, the one that couldn't let a good problem go until it was solved, was hopelessly curious. It was the same sort of insatiable drive that had asked whether he could build a flying suit of armor (and pilot it without killing himself). At that moment, it wanted nothing more than to know what he was seeing, and whether or not Ms. Maximoff was truly as mad as he had been led to believe.

Could there actually be children at the house? Mr. Wilson had seen them. Ms. Maximoff seemed to see them. And now Tony could too.

 _This is the sort of decision making that landed you here in the first place,_ a voice that sounded much like Potts said inside his head. _You dove head first into your armor testing without taking enough precaution. Look where it got you._

The devilish part said, _Don't you want to know what's really going on here?_

He'd learned nothing from his mistakes, he decided. Against Tony's better judgment, he followed the children.

The brown haired boy was waiting for him in the hall. As Tony approached him, he ran a little farther ahead. They repeated this several times, working their way through the house, until Tony found himself in the billiards room. It was at that point that Tony watched the brown haired boy run straight through a closed door, the one that led to the conservatory.

Tony rubbed at his eyes. Well, that solved the issue of whether they were real or not. Nothing could pass through a solid door like that.

But as he rounded on his heel to go back to bed, he heard the unmistakable sound of a sob from the glass room beyond. Tony peered out through the window in the door. Ms. Maximoff was out there. Tony set his candle down on the billiard's table, under the watchful, sour eye of Ms. Frost's portrait, and went out to her at once.

She was kneeling in sandy dirt, in front of a stone bench surrounded by thick stalks, dripping with purple flowers. She had a partial bouquet of flowers clutched in one hand, the other was pressed against her mouth, staving off more sobs. She was so lost in her grief that she didn't hear Tony's footsteps until he was almost upon her. She turned her tear-streaked face up to him sharply, a flash of anger on her face that faded to relief.

"I thought you were Shaw," she said.

"Well I'm glad that I'm not," Tony replied, offering her a hand up, which she accepted. "Dare I ask what brought you out here so late?"

She looked down at the bundle of flowers in her hand. Well, that was one surprise question answered; the night wasn't a total wash. He knew where the bouquets around the manor came from now. Overhead, the rain sheeted off the windows, and not far from where they stood, a crack in one of the ceiling panes let a dribble of water fall steadily on the flowers below.

"Whenever I can't sleep—whenever all I can do is think of them—I come out here to remember. It's better than Shaw's _methods of loci._ " Her face twisted with an agony that only a bereaved mother could feel. "I imagine that I'm gathering the amaranth for their graves. I never visited while I was well. I suppose that makes me a terrible mother. But I couldn't bear it, you see. I couldn't accept that they were really gone. So long as I hadn't seen that they were buried, it was like they were only missing, like they might come home at any moment."

Tony understood in a way, and his heart twisted in sympathy. When his parents had died, the thought of never seeing his mother again had been unbearable. He hadn't wanted to go to her grave either.

"It's the finality of it all, it's terrible," he agreed. "I don't think it makes you a terrible mother, I think it makes you human."

He picked several sprigs of amaranth from a plant next to the bench. It left the bench looking lopsided and barren where he'd taken the flowers, and if there was a gardener in employ at the house, they'd have Tony's head on a spike. But Tony pushed the thought to one side—flowers could always grow back. Compassion was more important in this time and place.

"Is this the only place it grows?" Tony asked, idly. He hadn't seen anything flowering outside the windows of the manor. Everything that hadn't died off was dormant, preparing to weather the winter, it seemed.

"Yes, it likes the warmth. I don't think it could grow here outside the glass gardens. Sometimes it almost seems like another patient here."

"How so?"

"I don't know that we're made for a life outside the walls of this place either." She looked so sad. "Maybe not you—but I'm beginning to suspect I shall stay here the rest of my life, like Mr. Wilson."

"Truly? I doubt that…" Mad or not, if one thing came out of Tony's stay here, he would see to it that Shaw and Essex never worked again.

He handed his sprigs of amaranth to Ms. Maximoff to finish her bouquet, and her fingers ghosted along his as they closed around the green stems. "Oh—" she said, the only warning before her eyes rolled back in her head.

"Ms. Maximoff?" he said in alarm. This looked like the beginning of a seizure. And her pale skin suddenly felt so cold, as if it had been drained of all blood.

"Tony," she said, in the same deep voice that he'd heard when he had found her sleepwalking. The flowers fell forgotten at her feet as she grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. "Tony! You have to break free. Can't you remember?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tony stammered, taking a step backward, trying to break free of her grip. So cold—just like in the dreams.

She started to say something else, but her head lolled to one side, and then her fingers dug into his arms. Her speech came out as gibberish.

Tony needed to get help, but he couldn't pry her hands from him. She was preternaturally strong, and she kept him rooted to the spot.

His saving grace was a flash of lightning. It lit up the conservatory, bright and brilliant, and Ms. Maximoff's grip on him loosened just long enough for Tony to turn tail and run—only to skid to a stop, just outside the door.

Through the window, he looked into the billiard room, lit by the lone candle he'd left on the green playing table. Something was moving—something on the wall, at the cusp of where the flickering light reached. The portrait, he realized, a dark shadowy form was slithering out of it.

A hand. Then an arm.

Tony stood at the window, immobile with terror, and watched as the grim blond girl crawled from the faded gold frame, hand over hand, until she dropped to the floor, her long blond hair all askew in the candlelight. Then her head swiveled, and her large eyes fixated on Tony.

She ran toward him, hands outstretched.

Thunder rumbled and another flash of lightning split the sky, blinding Tony. He blinked, one arm thrown up in front of his face, as if it could ward him from whatever horror was charging him.

But when the spots cleared from his vision, the girl was gone.

The candle on the billiards table flickered in the gloomy, empty room as the muted sounds of the grandfather clock chimed four in the morning.

~*~

The next morning, Tony was frazzled. He hadn't slept at all.

After whatever Tony had seen in the billiards room had vanished, he had found Ms. Maximoff coming round. She couldn't remember anything of the past few minutes, and when he told her she had had a fit, she was deeply distressed.

He'd helped her to her room and then spent the rest of the night watching his bedroom door, vacillating between the sincere belief that he was under the effect of a drug, and a creeping paranoia that he was losing his wits.

He was accustomed to nights with little sleep, but none at all turned out to be quite a different beast. His eyes were dry and his limbs heavy. His thoughts came in jumps and waves. Despite this, and the carafe of coffee being fragrant and maddeningly near him at the breakfast table, Tony abstained. He passed on the day's toast with jam and eggs as well, even though his stomach grumbled.

Today, Ms. Maximoff was absent from the breakfast, as was her brother, and Tony hoped she was recovering from the shaking that had struck her last night.

"Not feeling well?" Shaw asked, newspaper under one arm as he brought out a tray of more toast. He had a smug look on his face.

"Not especially," Tony lied.

Across the table, Mr. Wilson took a big swig of his coffee. He was bursting with excitement, and his smile verged on maniacal. "It was a noisy night. Did you see them?"

Tony saw that Mr. Wilson was addressing him, and instantly regretted meeting the other man's eyes.

Mr. Wilson's scarred face lit up. "You did, didn't you?" He was delighted.

Tony was keenly aware that Shaw was still in the room. "I don't know what you're talking about."

He was saved from further harassment when Mr. Victor strode in carrying a vase, amaranth dripping over its side. He set it down in the middle of the table, then twisted the vase so that it matched an exact indentation in the table cloth—precisely where it would have been stationed on any other morning. _Nothing out of place,_ Tony thought. The tableau in front of him was nearly the same as it had been the day before.

Mr. Wilson's attentions turned to Mr. Victor. He was elated. "Ah, did you actually stop to smell the flowers this morning?"

Mr. Victor scowled at him. "They have no smell."

"Sure they do," Mr. Wilson said, stretching over the table and grabbing one of the tendrils of flowers. He crushed it in his hand and held it out to the nearest person, which was Tony. It smelled faintly of onion, and Tony wrinkled his nose and pushed Mr. Wilson's hand away.

"Keep your hands off them, fool!" Mr. Victor growled.

"What did you do to my sister!?" A new, angry voice joined the breakfast party. Mr. Maximoff. He had come in behind Tony, out of sight, and Tony was startled as he felt hands cinch about his neck.

"I warned you," Mr. Maximoff hissed.

China and silverware clanked, as Tony's head was forced down into the table. He scrabbled at his hands, trying to pry them from his throat. But when that proved useless, he twisted in his seat, managing to roll the pair of them to the floor. This finally broke his assailant's grip, and Tony grabbed him by the wrists, pinning one to the floor. Mr. Maximoff was livid—and quick. He thrashed about, and with his one free arm, he decked Tony. Despite the odd angle, it landed solidly and hurt. Tony was sure he'd have a black eye to show for it in the morning.

"Stop it!" Shaw shouted, and then to Mr. Victor: "Help me."

It might have been a moment that changed everything—if Mr. Victor had refused, if Mr. Maximoff hadn't been so angry. They might have all worked together and taken Shaw by surprise. But Mr. Victor complied, grabbing Tony, who promptly gave up the fight, and allowed himself to be pushed up against the wall.

Mr. Maximoff, however, was far from done, and despite Shaw's meaty grip on him, his eyes still blazed, locked on to Tony like a rabid dog. He flailed, and almost got free again.

"Just for that, you'll see the doctor first," Shaw said nastily, manhandling the young man out of the room. Over his shoulder, he told Mr. Victor to take Tony to his room.

Some hours later, Tony watched from his window as Shaw trudged back toward the house with Mr. Maximoff. The young man's white head was bowed, nearly resting on his chest, and he was wrapped tightly in a thick wool blanket.

Tony waited like a man sentenced for the gallows. He was about to go through Frost House's final induction.

When he finally heard Shaw's knock on the door, he took a deep breath and went to go meet it head on.

~*~

Shaw led Tony out to the treatment room. It might have been more accurately described as a shed. It was a bare bones, single room, with tile on the floor and a metal roof and walls. A hollow space in the tile might have been a bath, once, large enough to fit a dozen people comfortably. It had been drained, left crusty with salts, and a high backed wooden chair had been left in one corner. What a curious thing to place there.

"Mr. Stark. I wondered when we would have the opportunity to start your treatment in earnest." Far from displeasure at the unruliness at breakfast, Essex sounded as though he were purring. "Remove everything but your trousers," the doctor instructed.

 _Strange order_ , Tony thought, as Shaw pushed him forward and he saw that the floor of the drained pool was dripping wet. Half of it was that the order was so unseemly. A physician could perhaps request it of a patient, but Tony's clothes had no bearing on his mind. The other half of his hesitation was the simple fact that it was so chilly. Tony was forgetting, of course, that he had no say in the matter.

Essex's eyes flitted to Shaw, and Tony's skin crawled at the thought of the orderly's hands on him.

"No need." Tony muttered.

He unbuttoned his wrinkled shirt, then slipped out of his undershirt, shoes and socks. He tried his best not to visibly shiver as he handed the folded pile over to Shaw. Satisfied, Essex indicated for Tony to climb down and seat himself.

The Spartan wooden chair wasn't very comfortable—it didn't have so much as a cushion. Like everything else in the room, it was also wet.

Essex and Shaw pulled out several strips of leather, which they wound through slits that looked as though they had been cut into the chair for this precise purpose. Then they began affixing Tony to the chair, first his wrists and ankles, and lastly his neck. He felt a jolt of fear as they buckled this one into place. He tried to move, but the leather held fast. There was little—if any—give.

 _So this is it_ , he thought grimly, wondering what came next. Would they douse him in water and leave him in the chilly air? It sounded miserable, but bearable.

Essex rounded to the rear of the chair and released a hidden catch. The back of the chair that Tony had been leaning against folded backward, and he suddenly found himself looking up at the metal ceiling, tenfold more anxious than he had been seconds ago.

"Perhaps you are wondering what we will be doing here today? It is a method of my own invention, and I find it produces remarkable results, though it is rather punishing. Certainly not for the faint of heart."

Tony quietly steeled himself for whatever might come.

"Water is a remarkable substance," Essex continued. "It gives life, and it can take it away. One of the few true forces of nature. Have you heard of water cure? It's been popular for decades. The only trouble is that it won't work on stubborn cases. It doesn't go nearly far enough. A good soak won't cure the ills of someone like yourself."

Tony heard water begin to run, splashing on the tiles behind him from a hose.

"Your lover told me quite a bit about you, Mr. Stark," Essex said. Shaw returned to his side and passed him a boiled rag, still steaming in the cold room. Then Shaw squeezed Tony's jaw, forcing his mouth open so that Essex could force the rag inside. "Or is lover the right word? She had scandalous things to say about you and other men…Though not at all surprising. A narcissist is naturally drawn to that which reminds them of themselves."

Outwardly, Tony only flinched. But on the inside, it felt like someone had ripped out his heart. How could Indries have betrayed his trust like that?

The corner of Essex's lips twitched into the faintest of smiles. "You still haven't guessed? She wanted you out of the way. I was all too happy to oblige when I saw how much Stane International would pay." He reveled in the way Tony swore this time, muffled by his makeshift gag. "Don't fret—the business side of things has no bearing on that fact that I am still your doctor. I will still rid you of the demons in your skull."

Shaw handed him a towel, which Essex draped over Tony's face.

"It really is fortunate you came here," Essex continued. "To unleash water's true potential for someone as sick as you, it's got to run all over. So few doctors realize that."

The first splashes of water dampened the towel on Tony's head, then the rag in his mouth grew heavy and wet. He tried to shut his lips to keep the water out, but the rag was too bulky.

Then panic clouded his mind, left him reeling. He couldn't breathe! He was drowning! He had to swallow, but even after he did, he couldn't catch his breath.

Tony bucked against the leather restraints, trying to twist his neck to one side in a vain attempt to escape the flow of water. He was tied down tight, and he knew that all he would earn for his trouble were bruises, marks to match Ms. Maximoff's and Mr. Victor's. No doubt Mr. Maximoff was sporting his own now, as well.

And yet, despite knowing this, the sensation of drowning was too terrible. Tony had to twist and turn—anything to make it stop.

"That's it," Essex cooed. "Let your malformed thoughts and desires come to the fore. Focus on them. Let the water wash them all away."

~*~

It seemed to go on forever.

"How do you feel?" Essex asked, when they finally let Tony up and untied the straps. "Lighter?"

Tony just nodded, accepting a scratchy woolen blanket like it was a lifeline. He would have said anything in that moment to keep them from tying him down again.

In truth, nothing about him felt different. All he felt was cold and weary from fading fear. It had been impossible to think about anything through the panic and the dread that he was dying. It had felt like he'd have water down his lungs at any moment, and all Tony had been able to do was focus on taking his next breath.

But Essex seemed pleased with his "progress," and when he told Shaw to take Tony back to the house, it came as a relief. Tony kept his head down, just as he had seen Mr. Maximoff do, as Shaw led him back.

Let them think he'd been cowed or transformed, let them think whatever they liked of him if it kept Tony from being dragged back for more.

In the mean time, Tony would plan his escape.

~*~

Two days passed from Tony's "treatment," in which he drank only from the tap in the lavatory, hoping to purge his body of any hallucinogens. His hollow stomach twisted painfully—but he saw no more of the strange apparitions, and so it was worth it, he told himself, even though the hunger left him weak and irritable.

On his seventh evening at the Frost House, the mists set in again. What odd weather. Rainy one night, misty the next. It seemed as constant as the ticking of the grandfather clock, and Tony wondered if this slip of coast ever saw blue sky.

He didn't dwell on this for long. Truthfully, he was happy for the dense fog. It would serve him well as he made his escape by making it difficult for anyone to spot him.

Dinner had wound down, and the others were retiring to bed when Tony slipped out the back door. He did it quietly, and was relieved that there was no one to see him. He didn't think anyone but Shaw would mind, but if no one saw which direction he was heading, then it would be harder for Shaw to find him when he discovered Tony was missing. He picked his way down the steps of the porch, and judging from where the sun had set, headed north. If Shaw had no indicator of where he had gone, then south, toward home, would be the most logical choice.

His one regret was that he hadn't thought to steal Shaw's thick coat. The dense fog meant that at least there was no wind, but it was still bitterly cold. Little wonder that they only issued thin clothes to the people staying at the Frost House.

Tony shivered, rubbed at his arms, and picked his way across the gritty sedge. The beach sand would have been easier going, but it would have left an easily spotted trail that led straight to Tony. How long would he have to walk like this before he came across another house, he wondered. He'd been asleep for the last leg of his journey out here, and had no idea what surrounded the place. _Remote enough that it might be some time,_ he decided. He'd seen no carriages along the road in front of the manor. He considered, then discarded, the possibility of asking for help at neighboring houses. No doubt they would know about the Frost House and suspect any patients that turned up on their doorstep.

No, he definitely couldn't risk going to the for help. If Shaw and Essex found out about his escape, no doubt he'd wind up locked in his room for good, just like poor Emma Frost. He would have to hope he found more signs of life when he cut inland further north.

He shivered again as he remembered his session with the doctor.

_"I hear you have been talking to Mr. Wilson about ghosts. Is this true?" Essex had said, pulling away the cloth and gag. He let the hose dribble cold water down the chair's back, next to Tony's ear. He could feel the icy splashes on his cheek as he gasped for air. "You really must tell me if you've been seeing things. It is impossible to treat the unknown."_

_"I haven't seen anything." Tony's voice quavered, but he was adamant. He had to believe that, if only for his own sanity._

_"Haven't you?" An odd puzzlement rang in the doctor's voice—a strange tone. Doubt, or skepticism that Tony was lying, would have made sense. But not surprise._

They must be drugging me, then, _Tony thought as the cloth and rag were replaced._ That's why they expect me to see the dead. It's a racket. _Essex had already admitted he was taking money to hold Tony here. What else might he be doing to line his pockets?_ _Hadn't Mr. Maximoff said that he and his sister had been here for over two years? If Essex and Shaw ensured their patients never got better—if they talked to their families, insisted it would be best to keep them out of the public eye and under safe watch—then Essex could bleed his patients' loved ones dry._

_Essex pulled the towel back down over Tony's face and started up the water again. It was so cold that it took Tony's breath away. He let out a shriek behind the rag in his mouth._

_"Have you been thinking on what I told you?" Essex asked._

_And too his shame, Tony only whimpered._

_The water subsided almost as soon as it had begun, a break in the rhythm of Essex's ministrations thus far. The towel was pushed up again. "Of course, you are having trouble. Ms. Moomji mentioned it had been quite some time for you. Perhaps I can help you to remember. Smell is a much more potent aid in recalling the past." He produced a small vial, uncapped it, and held it beneath Tony's nose._

_Ty. He'd know that cologne anywhere. But how—_

_Indries. Who else would have known and sent it to Essex?_

_"Do you remember yourself wrapped around him?" Essex prodded._

_Tony flushed and pulled against his leather bindings. Essex had no right._

_But he was right. And god, how Tony hated the doctor for it. He_ could _see them, in his mind's eye, lying in his bed, the smell of sex and Ty's cologne clinging to them both, Ty smiling at him. He'd never been so happy as when he was in Ty's arms—_

— _no, that wasn't quite right. The memory began to fracture. Ty was wickedly smart and handsome, but Tony couldn't shake the feeling that in this picture, he had settled for Ty. There was something better, a piece of him knew._

_But what?_

_For some reason, the man he had seen in the mirror swam into his thoughts._

_He felt like he was on the very cusp of remembering something important when the towel was pulled down again._

_Tony thrashed and let out an animal noise of frustration._

_"That's how you know it's working," Essex encouraged him. "Everyone has their breaking point. Soon you will reach yours, and all the effluent that's collected inside you will be washed clean."_

Tony rubbed at his arms, his flesh prickling in the evening air, and resolved never to be brought back to that horrid house. Better to walk as far as he could, he reasoned, then find a road and try to flag a passing carriage for help. He had to hope his lack of traveling clothes wouldn't cast too much suspicion on him, and that throwing himself on the mercy of strangers wasn't too foolish.

 _Fortunate I wasn't looking for a neighboring house_ , Tony thought to himself after wandering for some time. He hadn't come across any signs of other houses. And as he continued his journey, the fog grew thicker around him, so dense that in places he could hardly see six paces in front of himself. If Shaw was out following Tony, he might ride right past him, and never be the wiser.

To keep himself from getting turned around, Tony let the sounds of the waves off to his right guide him. Their rhythmic crashes lulled him as he walked, and he drifted into a fugue state where all that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other, and periodically rubbing at his arms to keep himself warm.

It felt like hours that he walked that night. His feet had grown sore, and his legs tired, when the fog parted up ahead, and Tony finally saw his first signs of life.

His excitement turned to ash in his mouth, and a cold sheet of horror wrapped around him.

He was staring up at the Frost House. He was certain of it. Had he gotten turned around in the fog?

But that simply wasn't possible. He had set off with the ocean to his right. Tony was certain of this. It was _still_ on his right. And yet there the house was; he was looking on it's southern face. And there was no question that it was the same point he had set out from. He could see Ms. Maximoxff in the conservatory, picking amaranth again.

~*~

Tony was full of anxious energy that night, trying and failing to unravel the reason he had come back to the Frost House. Could he be certain that they were not on an island? Was it possible that Mr. Hogan had crossed a bridge to bring him out here? But if it was an island, and Tony had walked its circumference, he would have crossed the road that Mr. Hogan had come in on at some point, and Tony knew that he had not.

Had his perception been compromised? Could he have wandered in the wrong direction and been mistaken about the sound of the waves?

His stomach ached and reminded him that he'd had nothing to eat for nearly three days. Before he had left, he'd been so sure that he was back to a right state of mind. Even if he had been wrong, Tony didn't know of any drug with such a potent effect that could last this long.

What if Shaw and Essex weren't drugging him at all? What if he _was_ going mad? The possibility had been there, nibbling at the back of Tony's mind, but it had been too horrible to entertain. Until now.

 _Can a madman understand he's going mad?_ Tony wondered. Rejecting what he was experiencing seemed the only sane thing for a man of science to do; and yet, what good was he as a man of science if his observations were unreliable? Nausea welled in his stomach.

Then he thought, _to hell with this all_ , and marched himself down to the study. He'd perused the scientific books down there for leisure during his first few days here. Now he went to find them with the same urgency as a news editor with a deadline. Surely one of the books could answer his questions and quell his doubts.

But once in the study, Tony stood in front of the bookshelves, puzzled. He could have sworn that he had seen a book on cognition somewhere along the bottom shelves. Could it have been taken out by another of the patients? He crouched down, examining the spines of the books, and frowned. They were all history books now—none on the sciences. It didn't seem reasonable that an entire shelf had been taken and replaced. And yet, now that he looked, he saw nothing on the sciences. He pulled out one of the unfamiliar books, a leather bound, red colored book, titled _The Decline of the Holy Roman Empire_ and opened it up to the middle.

 _The man pressed a flower into the palm of my hand. "It's urgent that you get this to Wanda as soon as possible. Make her remember—"_ the rest of the sentence was a garble of letters that Tony couldn't make out. He blinked, and pressed his eyes shut before reopening them, but still they swum in his vision, as though he were growing faint.

Tony shut the book, confused, and checked the spine again. What he had read sounded straight out of the dime-store novels, not a volume on civilization. He pulled out another, a biography titled, _The Life and Times of George Washington._ To his dismay, Tony was greeted with the same strange sentence, repeated over and over again, all down the page. He flipped to the end of the book—it was no different. And at the end of each line were those strange, swirling letters.

He shoved the book back onto the shelf, turned, and jumped.

It was the man he had seen in the mirror. He didn't look corporeal, not like the night Tony had seen him before. Instead he seemed flat and fuzzy, and his image flickered, like light thrown onto a wall by a guttering candle. The vision's lips moved, but the room remained silent. Then the man reached a hand out, and Tony shivered as it passed through his shoulder, so terribly cold.

Just like in his dreams.

Was this man what Tony had been missing?

If he _was_ going mad, then there was nothing left for Tony to lose. He cleared his throat, trying to compose himself, and said, "I can't hear you."

The man looked pained. He disappeared for a few moments, then flashed into view again. With his fingers, he outlined a rectangle in the air, then mimed grasping a door knob and opening it. Then he pointed to Tony.

"You want me to go through a door?" Tony asked, and the man nodded vigorously. It dawned on Tony—the spirit, or whatever the man was, had said Tony's name. "You've been speaking through Ms. Maximoff. You're the one that's told me to escape." In her trances, she had asked him to find a way out—and now the spirit wanted him to find a door. His heart sank. "I've already tried to leave." And then he voiced the cold worry that had been squeezing his heart. "I don't think there _is_ a way out of here."

The man shook his head. He was growing fainter by the second, like daylight being swallowed by night. His eyebrows knit together and he seemed genuinely worried at Tony's defeatism. He pointed behind Tony, at the books.

"What am I supposed to make her remember?" Tony asked, confused as he glanced behind himself. But when he looked back, the man had disappeared.

~*~

He was going mad after all, that was the only explanation for it. If someone had told Tony that he would ever listen to a vision and try to make sense of it, he would have laughed in their face.

The joke was on him now.

He found Ms. Maximoff out in the conservatory, the same place he had seen her last. She was picking flowers again, near the bench, and Tony wondered what drew her to them in particular. The glass garden was populated with other flowers: little white button-like bushes, and roses. But it was always the amaranth that she picked.

Why could it possibly be important for Tony to give her more of the purple flowers?

As Tony approached her, he saw that her hands were balled into fists, and her head was down.

 _Everyone has a breaking point,_ Essex had said.

Ms. Maximoff, it seemed, had found hers.

"I don't want to remember! I don't want to!" She screamed, full of rage and grief.

"Shaw's been at you again," Tony said, coming to crouch down by her.

She wiped her tear stained face. "It seems to be the only thing more constant than the rain."

 _What an odd thing to say,_ Tony thought, dropping to his heels beside her, then froze. The plant that he had unconscionably maimed a few nights before—the one next to the bench—it was pristine, as though it had never been touched. He reached out a quivering hand and plucked one of the soft green stems. He half expected it to vanish, or to be no more substantial that the mists, like a piece of a dream or a hallucination.

"What is this place?" He mumbled out loud. And then, "Ms. Maximoff, how often do you pick the flowers here?"

She blinked several times at the question, taken aback. "Nearly every day since I came here…a handful at least…"

Tony looked around the conservatory. It was large, but there wasn't nearly enough amaranth to sustain that sort of habit.

_Unfading, forever, unchanging._

"You said Mr. Shaw is constant as the rain, what did you mean by that?" Tony demanded, but he suspected he already knew, and he could see that she was growing more confused and alarmed by his agitation. Even so, Tony felt helpless to rein himself in. He felt like he was teetering on the brink—of what he did not know, madness, discovery—possibly both all at once. It was that craziest thought he had ever entertained, but he was suddenly struck with the notion that the flaw was not his own mind, but with the world around him.

"The rain, it always comes every other night?"

She nodded.

"Do you find that odd?"

"I suppose I never really considered it."

Tony's mind raced. _Make her remember,_ the ghost had said. But what? She had been made to remember her children dozens of times, cruelly so, by Shaw and Essex. If it had no effect, then what purpose could possibly be served by Tony reminding her yet again? Unless that wasn't what he was supposed to make her remember.

He handed her the plucked flower, and it lay draped in the palm of her hand. "What is so special about these flowers? What is special about them _to you?_ " he clarified.

The blank look on her face was slowly replaced by a furrowing of brows. "I don't know, I—"

A sudden understanding gripped him, and he crushed the purple tendril in his hand. The soft smell of spring radishes wafted up from his hand. Mr. Wilson was the strangest of all the patients in the house, but credit where it was due—he had an uncanny sense for the truth of things. "When was the last time you stopped and smelled them?"

"I don't see what good it will do," Ms. Maximoff said, but she raised them to her face, shut her eyes, and inhaled all the same. Her eyebrows furrowed, and then her eyes snapped open. For a terrifying moment, Tony thought she might start convulsing again. But when she spoke, it was still her voice. "A door…I remember now. It was framed with amaranth."

And then she rose, her vision focused somewhere inside of herself. "I have to start at the beginning," she said. "That's where it all went wrong. But I can fix this."

~*~

She headed to the front door, and Tony felt his heart sink. He had already tried to leave this way, after all. It seemed that he was back at square one.

But Ms. Maximoff opened it, confident and unconcerned. Tony stepped out into the chilly night air with her, and watched as her hands traced the peeling white paint of the door.

"Agatha took me to a cottage one summer. It had a door just like this, surrounded with amaranth." She placed a hand on one of the glazed planters, looking down on it with eyes full of good memories. Before Tony's eyes, the withered yellow stalks on either side of the door began to turn green, rising up, and sprouting purple blossoms.

"I am standing at the front door, and I remember that I made it," she said, a soft affirmation, before letting out a huff of laughter. "I'd forgotten until I stood here and really looked at it."

"How?" Tony asked, though it seemed a silly question, given what he had just seen.

"I made the whole of this place," Ms. Maximoff replied. "Now that I remember, I can change it." Her black dress began to ripple, a crimson color flowing into it, like ink sinking through water. In a few moments, the red had displaced all of the black. She motioned for Tony to follow her, and they reentered the foyer.

"I am standing in front of the grandfather clock," Ms. Maximoff said aloud as she walked up to the ticking timepiece. Its hands pointed to a quarter past midnight. She opened the glass door and wound them to three. " _Tempus breve est._ It reminds me that once things have been set in motion, we will not have much time."

"Why change the clock?" Tony asked.

"Because three in the morning is the witching hour. The walls will be thinnest then. It will be easier to leave."

Tony frowned. "But you can't change the time of day by changing a clock." In hindsight, it was an absurd thing to say, given what he had just seen her do—given all that he had experienced in this strange place. Still, some scientific principles seemed sacred.

"I can here," she replied cryptically, as red gloves began to form around her hands out of thin air, and Tony didn't see much point in arguing. Perhaps she could. Tony gave up trying to explain what his eyes were seeing.

Next Ms. Maximoff went to the stairs, a hand curling on the banister. On the landing, two children looked down at her with solemn eyes.

"I am at the first step toward leaving," she said. "And I remember that this place was designed to hold me—" she steeled herself, expression growing dark, "—to torment me. _Go outside and play,_ " she said to them. " _Leave me."_

The children turned and ran, not up the stairs, but straight through the wall.

Tony noticed, only after they had gone, that Ms. Maximoff's grip on the banister was white-knuckled. "Why would this place be designed to torment you, if you made it?" he asked as gently as he could, hoping to coax her out of the storm that raged inside of her, even with the boys gone.

"I don't know yet," she confessed. "But I expect I will by the end of this path."

A path. Like the riverside scene she had described on Tony's first day here. "You're using Shaw's method, aren't you?"

"Everything was put here to point me toward this," she said. "Even him."

Together they ascended to the top of the stairs. Wanda stood there for a moment, contemplating what she ought to remember at this point. Peeking out from beneath her skirts, Tony could see that she was wearing red shoes now.

"Three wings. Three prisoners. You, Mr. Stark, me, and my brother. The music room—that's the next stepping stone."

In the circular room, they found Mr. Maximoff at the piano again. Tony watched as his fingers flew across the keys—an eerie sight with the music room deathly quiet.

"What's going on?" Tony asked.

"A door is opening, and we're being drawn toward it," Ms. Maximoff said, as a pink glow began to emanate from her. Tony looked down and was shocked to find the magic rippling across his own skin too.

Ms. Maximoff placed a hand on her brother's shoulder, and he looked up, startled. He hadn't heard them either. They were like ghosts to the young musician. "It's time to go," she said, and her voice sounded different, like an echo.

Her brother blinked, confused, but rose dutifully, and he followed them without question.

"Neither of us is fully here anymore," she explained further to Tony, as they traced their steps back to the stairs. "I know too much now, and you've seen through the cracks. I suppose I should thank you for putting together all the oddities I left scattered about. I thought I would be able to find them, but I lost my hold of the pieces."

"You had other preoccupations," Tony said, thinking of the twins.

A door creaked open behind them, and when they turned, they saw that Shaw had caught on to them, and from the scowl on his face, it didn't look like he would let them go easily. "The doctor won't be pleased with this," he growled, and lunged toward Ms. Maximoff. Where his fingers grabbed her, the pink glow around her faded, and she gasped. She tried to claw at him, but _her_ fingers passed right through him. Shaw grinned. "This is over. You'll never leave this place."

In a blur, Mr. Maximoff tackled Shaw.

"Go!" He urged them, wrestling with the orderly. "I'll hold him off."

Ms. Maximoff hesitated, reluctant to leave him. "I'll bring you with me, no matter what."

Her brother huffed, struggling against the larger man. "I don't doubt you. But go!"

And then Ms. Maximoff was leading Tony up the second flight of stairs at a sprint—through the third floor's graveyard of tumbledown furniture. She began pulling off all of the covers, moving from one to another at a frenetic pace, searching, until she ripped a sheet from a tall, angular object. Tony recognized it as the statue he had seen on is first foray up here: a man carved from marble, clad in something that looked vaguely like a trimmed down version of Tony's flying suit of armor. Tony could never see himself springing for the statue's billowing cape, though. Too much of a fire hazard.

Another cape, red and long, wove itself out of the air and settled around Ms. Maximoff's shoulders. She paid it no mind as she snaked a hand outward, taking hold of the statue's mask.

"If I was the builder, this man was the architect," she said, and the marble mask came away in her grip, revealing a scarred face of flesh and blood, it's eyes closed. "Though I suspect he did not anticipate finding himself here as well."

"Is that Mr. Victor?" Tony asked, aghast.

"Yes and no."

At the sound of his name, the statue's—the man's?—eyes snapped open. "Let me out of here, witch!" He snarled.

"A witch... They called me that once, didn't they?" She blinked and let the marble mask fall to the ground. It shattered like glass instead of stone.

On the floor below, Tony could hear wood splintering, a scream, and a primal shout that sounded like Shaw's deep voice. Then Tony heard footsteps, thundering up the stairs. 

"We don't have much time," Tony said, tugging at Ms. Maximoff's hand.

She pulled her gaze from Mr. Victor with difficulty, and nodded. "We're nearly there, though." Up the mezzanine stairs she ran, Tony close behind, and stopped in front of the door-that-wasn't-a-door.

She put her hand on it and closed her eyes. As a scarlet headdress appeared in her hair, Tony watched as the wall faded away, replaced with an inky void. He couldn't tell what lay beyond. An attic? He crouched down, feeling for the floor beyond the threshold and felt only empty space. Wind rushed in his ears, like he was looking in to the mouth of a great cavern, something vast that couldn't possibly exist within the walls of the house.

He stood, looking at Ms. Maximoff. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. Nothing here makes sense."

"That's because it wasn't built for someone like you," she said, and held out her hand. Tony grasped it firmly. Behind them, Tony could hear Shaw tearing through the maze of furniture. It was now or never.

 _God_ , Tony thought as he felt her give a reassuring squeeze, _I hate magic._

They jumped together, hand in hand.

~*~

Tony woke, cradled in someone's arms, on the floor of the mansion, a cacophony of voices filling the space, which only worsened his massive headache. Several people were speaking, and he could hear others shuffling in and out of the room. He groaned, rolled over, and then vomited. Oddly enough, what his mind fixated on wasn't how he had come to be here, but rather, how much trouble he would be in when Jarvis found out he had been sick all over one of the nice Persian rugs.

"Easy, easy," Tony felt a hand on the back of his head, stroking his hair. "Can I get a bowl? And a towel? Water too…"

Tony wiped his mouth on a proffered rag, and shifted again so that he was on his back.

Everything else faded away as he looked up into Steve's eyes.

The foundation of his world had been missing—and here it was in front of him.

"Oh god," his voice came out choked. "I couldn't remember you, Steve. It was like you didn't exist." No wonder it had felt like a part of him had been carved away.

Steve's lips twitched into a sad, half smile. "I started to guess as much."

God, it felt so surreal to hear Steve's voice again after whatever purgatory Tony had been living in. A dream? It was already beginning to fade like one. The 19th century lack of tech hadn't been the torture, it had been the void that Steve had left inside of him. Tony felt a little bit of him curl up, revolted at the idea of an entire life lived without knowing his handsome, blond soldier.

Not a dream. Tony looked down and saw that he was still wearing the simple shirt and trousers he'd been wearing as a patient. He looked like he'd just walked off the set of a Victorian period piece. On the far side of the room, he could see Dr. Doom, trussed up in one of Clint's net arrows. The archer was standing beside him, talking to She-Hulk about gag arrows.

"At first I didn't realize that your memories were altered. I'm sorry I didn't figure it out sooner, Tony. Even then, it was hard to pass you any sort of a message. We went for help to find you after you disappeared. But even a world-class telepath and the Sorcerer Supreme had hell breaking through to the universe Wanda created. Her powers kept filtering out anything that didn't 'fit in.' It was Jarvis's idea to sneak a message in through the library. He pointed out that a book can say anything."

If Tony's head hadn't hurt so much, he might have laughed. It was a good idea, even if the magic had scrambled the message between the page and Tony's eyes. "So what exactly happened? I remember the attack, but…"

Pieces of it were beginning to come back to Tony now—Dr. Doom's ambush, a mist that had risen in the air around him, Wanda, and Pietro—Wanda grabbing hold of Doom's arm—but Tony didn't have all the pieces yet to put together.

"He hit you with an aerosol." Steve explained. "Reed did an analysis on a sample and said it was a hypnotic. As far as he could tell, it renders its victims vulnerable to suggestion."

Oh. Well, Doctor Doom's sinister parting words to Wanda made much more sense in light of that information. _Make yourself a prison, the worst you can imagine._ The implications were downright chilling when the directive was given to someone with the ability to warp reality itself.

Tony felt his stomach lurch. "How is she?"

Steve looked over his shoulder, then helped Tony to his feet.

The others must have carried Wanda to the couch. Her eyes were shut, but her face was pinched with pain. Dr. Strange was weaving a spell above her, brow furrowed with deep concentration. At her side, Emma Frost was clasping one of Wanda's hands.

A sudden _pop_ filled the air, and in a flash, Pietro appeared, hunched and on his knees. He groaned and staggered to his feet. "Wanda? Where is my sister?"

She opened her eyes, and winced.

 _She brought him back, just like she promised,_ Tony thought, before a darker thought took him. "There were more people in that universe."

"I noticed," said Steve. "We checked, and as far as we can tell, every single one of them is still present and accounted for here."

"So she recreated them?"

Steve nodded, and Tony felt perturbed by the possibility.

Perhaps that explained why the ghost of one of twins had been able to talk, though. She'd created them, along with the other inhabitants of the Frost House. It was only the outside "invading" forces that had been limited by her magic.

Wanda was sitting up now, rubbing at her head. She looked as though she had the same sort of headache that Tony had. Maybe worse. She'd been the one doing the mental and magical gymnastics to get them home, after all. It was remarkable what she'd done, and the genius in Tony was, frankly, jealous. Under the duress of Doom's command, she'd made the prison—but made it in the shape of a memory palace, leaving herself clues to guide her back home.

"You did it!" Pietro said, pulling his weary sister into a hug. "You saved us!"

Over Pietro's shoulder, Tony saw Wanda blink. "Saved you from what?"

~*~

Tony yawned, making his way to the kitchen to scrounge up a cup of coffee. He would be eternally grateful for being pulled out of Victorian New England, but the unfortunate downside of disappearing in a suit of armor and reappearing in a suit of linen and wool was that he needed to either retrofit an old piece of armor or build a new model to go out as Iron Man again.

And Tony, being Tony, new just sounded all kinds of better. What better way to recover from what felt like a horrible bender than sinking himself deep into problem solving? The backwards stabilizers on his last chest piece had been too weak, a side effect of cutting bulk around his middle, but he was confident he could find a reasonable compromise this time around.

He was just starting up the coffee grinder when Pietro came in. He looked as weary as Tony felt.

Tony gave him a greeting nod. "How is she?"

"She still remembers nothing."

They were the only two Avengers who knew the full story of what had transpired.

"I'd be happy to forget the whole affair too," Tony said. If only he had the luxury of forgetting the panic and doubt he'd felt on his last day in Wanda's universe. Pietro's mouth twitched at the comment.

"You saw the ghosts of the children, didn't you?" Tony nodded, and Pietro's expression grew grave. "Some part of her must remember if they were there…"

"That's awful," Tony said. He had been thinking of his own feelings of loss, of being unable to remember what he was missing. The ache and the frustration had been unbearable. If there was even a sliver of Wanda that felt that now, then he grieved for her. "I'd rather have the memories of someone I loved than to lose them completely."

Pietro's lips thinned, and Tony knew, whatever his own private thoughts on the subject were, he couldn't agree with Tony. "You can't tell her. You saw how much it agonized her to know they were dead. If she found out that they had never really existed—"

"I won't," Tony promised.

Pietro made him swear it before he was satisfied enough to leave Tony to his engineering.

Steaming mug in hand, Tony made his way back to his workshop. As close as Pietro and Wanda were, Tony didn't envy Pietro the burden of such a secret. It reminded him of how conflicted he'd been during all the years he'd kept his face hidden from Steve. It had always been within his power to reveal his identity, though, and that—plus the seed that had been in the back of Tony's mind that someday, when the time was right, he _would_ tell Steve—made it easier. To be bound by permanent silence would have been horrible.

As he set about returning to his work on the armor, Tony let himself become completely absorbed by the stabilizer problem. He was so focused, in fact, that he didn't see that he had company.

"Got some news for you, Stark," a gruff voice said. It seemed to grow more gravelly with every year that passed, and Tony knew who it was without looking up.

He shut off his blowtorch and pulled up the welding helmet. "How did you get down here, Nick?"

"Through the door."

Tony didn't bother to point out that it had been locked. Spies. The only people more tight-lipped about the tricks of their trade were stage magicians. "What do you want?"

"Nothing—call it a favor. Came to show you something, your eyes only," Fury said, handing over a manila folder. Tony pulled off his thick gloves and leafed through the pages. "It's all preliminary right now. Feasibility studies and impact analysis. But there's several Senators who are fierce supporters. It'll be an issue, sooner rather than later. All it needs to get burning is the strike of a match."

"What do you want me to do?" Tony asked dubiously.

"You're the Secretary of State…you've got connections. Use 'em. Figure out a way to give 'em what they want without making capes into outlaws."

"That's a stiff ask."

"Stiffer consequences if you fail. Can you imagine Rogers backing down if the government tells him to retire?"

Tony swallowed and handed the folder back. The spy-master was right, of course. "No, I can't."

"Then make sure it isn't an issue," he said.

Tony looked down at his half-finished armor, a sour taste in his mouth as Fury excused himself. All his enthusiasm for the project had shriveled up as he skimmed those papers. Under different circumstances, he might have sought out Steve and asked for his advice. But now that thought made him grow cold. _Your eyes only._ And Steve would be livid if he knew—he'd do something rash.

Tony pulled off the rest of his welding equipment and went to his computer.

He'd have to fix this before the government cracked down on superheroes…there was no other way. _Find something palatable to both sides,_ he exhorted himself _._ Training came to mind immediately…but he'd need something more.

 _Perhaps registration_ _…_

~*~

The ground was soft under his jet boots as Tony landed. It must have rained here last night, but thankfully the morning had blown away all traces of the storm. Overhead the sky was a crisp, egg-shell blue—not a cloud in the sky. It had been excellent flying weather. Just what he needed for a short trip up the coast.

Tony hadn't been sleeping well for the past few weeks. He was running himself ragged, he knew. Others were beginning to pick up on it as well. Steve had jokingly asked if he had switched to decaf.

God. Tony hated politicians.

The Frost House looked very different without the persistent gloom and clouds: less eerie, more sad. A century of disrepair had left the sea-side house as a crumbling shell. It's facade looked even more withered and tired than it had before Wanda's magic had brightened it with flowers.

Tony couldn't say what had prompted him to come here—only that when—by strange happenstance—he had found that there was an old historical house under the Frost name, it had sparked his curiosity. His first thought had been, _she pulled Pietro out of it, could she have accidentally pulled the whole house into this reality?_ But some digging had revealed that there had been no Emma among this family—they were completely unrelated to the X-Man. These Frosts had had a daughter named Emily, though, who had mysteriously vanished from public life. Perhaps Wanda had patterned her reality on the real place?

Tony walked up the creaking, peeling steps and peered through the windows. Inside, it was a ruin—papers strewn everywhere, termite-eaten furniture. What dated upholstery remained was rotting scraps of cloth.

He tried the one of the front doors, and was surprised to find it unlocked.

If there had ever been a grandfather clock in the foyer, it was long gone now. Tony continued to wander through the house, marveling at how similar its layout was to what he remembered.

And then Tony reached the conservatory.

He opened the door and stepped out into the garden. A cool sea breeze licked at his exposed cheeks, blowing through broken panes of glass. The soil of the gardens was chalky white and bone dry.

But the purple amaranth was just as he remembered it, not a leaf wilted. Stalks of drooping purple still framed the half crumbling stone bench. Tony reached out one of his gauntlets, half expecting it to disintegrate in his hands, or vanish like a dream in morning light. But the bloom was real and solid.

Which meant there was really only one explanation for this place. Maybe it had been a house where a girl named Emily Frost had lived once. But Wanda's magic had changed it, overlaid it, bled through whatever medium they had severed to come back from that other shade of a universe.

Tony felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise. If her magic had brought these flowers into their world…

Behind him, he heard the creak of a door and the echoing laughter of two boys.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Chronologically, I envisioned this as taking place shortly before the events of Avengers Disassembled.
> 
> Tea, I just wanted to let you know that I absolutely loved the original. My only stumbling block was that I had trouble thinking of what I would change. The original was just too perfect! 
> 
> To everyone else, you should definitely go check out the original-- _especially_ if you'd like a brighter, steampunky world.


End file.
